Mum was well enough to travel, so we decided we'd go ahead and hold the Wake for my Dad.
We had organised a family garden party, in my garden, to coincide with (what would have been) my parents' 65th wedding anniversary.
The run up was so busy. DB and I spent a night at my parents house, doing yet more clearing, then we collected Mum and brought her to my house. Things were derailed slightly, as she had very high blood pressure and we had to take her over to her GP surgery and wait for them to see her. her medications were amended and she was cleared to travel, and we got back home about 7 hours later than we planned.
The next three days were a whirl of preparations. We emptied the summerhouse, cleaned it, washed it, washed the floors. We got rid of severely out of date soft drinks. I cleaned the fridge. We started running the machine to make ice cubes, and I started manually making HUGE ice cuves.
DH made cake stands using some of the china and the stand bits I'd bought from the lovely Theresa at Through the Cake Hole. We washed and stacked the china and sorted out the cutlery. The gazebo was put up, we shorted out the seating. DH got the party stuff out of th loft and it was washed and assembled.
My DB had found some video of my Dad which he had digitised. I edited it so we had just some short clips to show. We wrote and practised and revised our joint eulogy.
We went shopping the day before to get all the bits that could be bought in advance. We worked out the layout of all the stuff, with me writing on bits of paper so that we would know what to put where the following morning.
On the day, DB collected the pre-ordered sandwich and dessert platters from Costco, while I sorted out the rest of the food. Everything was ready in time.
We used the china. It looked magnificent. Stacks of tiny side plates, a sea of cups and saucers, and a trio of teapots (one of which didn't contain tea at all, just more tea Vicar) . The cake stands and sandwich platters looked stunning.
It went really, really well.
I thought I'd feel better afterwards, but it was then a few days of trying to take everything down and putting everything away. Mum stayed for three more days, then we took her back to her Home, and we went on to the house and spent two nights and three days trying to get everything to a point where the photographer could come.
And then we went home, and I've been knackered ever since.
I've still got to make bags for the cake stands, but I need a bit of a break from it.
I need to sort out what I've got left and have another push at selling it.
I'm off to see Mum tomorrow, so it'll have to wait until later in the week,
